There is a culture of wanting everything now that has become steadily more prominent over the last 15 years as the internet has become an enabler for whatever you want, whenever - Deliveroo, Prime, Disney+, Steam, Dropbox… the list of services designed to get a physical or digital product to you ASAP increases daily. Recent economic factors have perhaps curbed that ability to an extent (certainly a reduction in impulse spending) but with funds available, none of us now want to wait.
As a parent, trying to show your child that having everything all at once should not be the expectation is important - just because you could get it now / tomorrow doesn’t mean you should. There needs to be a good reason to expedite. In previous posts I have mentioned my own ‘affliction’ for impulse guitar acquisitions, I really have to reign myself in hard sometimes.
In business, management can similarly have an expectation that an idea or proposal can simply happen ‘now’ or be delivered tomorrow - surely all that investment in IT brings that ability? True, advances in integration and the convenience of cloud does mean a shorter deployment for certain ideas or processes but it relies on there being the appropriate infrastructure in place first. Going back to my earlier examples - Prime simply could not deliver the sheer volume and variety of goods the next day, without the enormous web platform, warehousing and delivery network integration that is in place. The management at Amazon back in the early 00s had the idea but it took time to deliver that capability. These days that same management can make a new proposal (for example the ‘same day delivery’ concept) and due to that existing platform, built over many years, the fruition of that idea to market was no doubt far quicker.
There is at least one area in business where you can get what you want nearly as quickly as a Prime delivery and make it available anywhere and from anywhere by anyone (you want). Content and process management. Actually, with a document (content) management platform configured, you can have what you want (documents of course) immediately. Anytime. Anywhere.
The first (and only) caveat - there needs to be an initial infrastructure / application deployment in place to provide the foundation for later, more rapid changes, enhancements and implementations. An example of this ‘rapid’ process change was covered in a previous article which showed the potential time and resource savings achievable with 5 minutes of configuration - you can see the full example here. With content centralised and managed, the wider teams, departments and even selected members of the public can have what they want when they want or need it.
Don’t believe me? Try these (simple) examples:
- Want to add the ability to search for document content directly from your accounts package? Use ‘no-code’ integration to add a button to the accounts screen that launches a search in the content platform based on a value on screen. Time to implement: < 30 minutes. Availability: instant
- Want to add (capture) a new set of simple documents to your content platform’s incoming feed? Create a folder and then configure a ‘watch task’ to automatically poll for content. Setup a simple template to assist with the capture of index information and storage with associated search configurations for users. Time to implement: < 4 hours. Availability: instant
- Want to improve the efficiency, accuracy and audit of simple document reviews? Create a simple workflow to automate notification and record actions of approvers. Generate content / further notifications / escalations / exports / web hooks to ensure maximum automation and 100% task completion. Time to implement: < 8 hours. Availability: instant
Obviously the more complex an issue, pain-point or process you address, the greater the implementation time, however, there are some simple things that many organisations don’t take advantage of at initial implementation that can be delivered almost immediately and deliver positive results.
Take 5 minutes. Look at the simple processes you or your department repeat multiple times, everyday. If you see multiple ‘clicks’ for no real benefit or switching between systems to reconcile / check data, then there is likely a better way - I have said before, if it feels clunky, it probably is. And that better way, could potentially be delivered, almost now.
Have an idea about where to improve but not sure what to do about it? That is where PacSol comes in - we are here to assist your organisation get the most out of document management and business process automation. Give us a call, drop us an email or even simply book a time in our calendar directly and let us see where we can help your organisation improve.
Toby Gilbertson, Director of Operations. June 2023
#PacSolUK #DocumentManagement #DigitalTransformation #BusinessProcess
